Shades of Nothingness

by Gary Fry

  It had been fifteen years ago. Their boy had been five. He’d gone to bed one night, allowing Ted and his wife to enjoy a bottle of wine and a film about far worse lives than their own. Later, however, they’d heard a terrible cry and had rushed upstairs. In the boy’s room, they’d found their son with his head trapped in his bed’s metal framework. His face had been white like a ghost’s, his tongue lolling, a queasily contrasting purple.

  A design fault was blamed, a problem arising between conception and production of the bed. Nobody had accepted responsibility, however, and it had taken a court case just to achieve that verdict. At the end of this period, Ted and his wife had been shattered, but had somehow clung together…and indeed still did. Even so many miles apart, they remained bound by memory, fear, horror.

  Ted had finished eating; his sangria lay lifeless in his glass. He put down his plate and then glanced up. The Marks were still laughing boisterously, their equally loathsome friends in tow. Maybe faith in anything, Ted thought nebulously, involves a perceptual background, a frame of reference, an out-group to despise just as one clung to one’s own values…

  He glanced again at the distant rocks and all the churning water around them. Light flickered on their crowns, as if something—or perhaps many somethings—cavorted just beyond. It didn’t look possible from here, but Ted believed that people might walk around those rocks. The sea had yet to fully assault the coastline.

  To facilitate these meandering thoughts, he removed his packet of cigarettes from a pocket, fished one out, and then went searching for his lighter in another.

  With disturbing mimicry, Frank Marks and…Keith, had he been called? Yes, Keith—withdrew cigarettes of their own. But just as Ted was about to light his, he noticed a Spanish waiter pace across to the two men, mutter something inaudible, and then depart, leaving both looking angry.

  This made Ted dismiss further speculation about how close he was in mind-set to the Daily Mail-reading bore and then step across to see what had just happened.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked after reaching the pair, noticing that their wives appeared similarly aggrieved, even though neither seemed to be a smoker.

  “The world’s gone mad, ” announced Frank, his voice as furious as the encroaching sea had begun to sound. “And there I was thinking it was just our country. Bloody foreigners!”

  This was all predictable enough, but Ted still didn’t understand what the problem was. Prompting a fuller explanation, he hitched his hands, one of which held an unlit cigarette.

  “Apparently, ” Frank went on with the silent support of his three companions, “we’re not allowed to smoke on the beach. It’s a health and safety hazard, by all accounts—I shit you not! I mean, here, with all this fucking water!”

  “Frank, ” said Mrs Marks, perhaps concerned that her husband’s drunkenness might reveal too much of the real him, the one with whom she was no doubt over-familiar and eager to keep from public awareness lest anyone pity her.

  Ted struggled to control his mind; it was being too perceptive this evening, and he preferred it blissfully numb. Then, with what felt like intuition, he said, “Hey, Frank, mate—follow me. ”

  The man steadied himself, glaring grimly ahead. But then Ted looked at his new Scouse friend. “You, too, dude. I know just the place, ” he added, before walking away, across the beach towards the rocks he’d spotted earlier.

  The men must have been following him; how else to account for the plodding sounds in his wake? These were clearly footfalls, kicking at sand with booze-slackened gaits. Ted kept on moving and didn’t slow until he was closer to his impromptu destination. He couldn’t see any light there now; the rocks and their surroundings were smothered in deceptively dense shadow.

  Nevertheless, he paced behind them, expecting the two men to follow. They did so, and then they were all out of sight of the party, including the waiters who, to judge by Frank’s wounded expression, had just overstepped their remit.

  Either Ted’s job in health and safety or what had once happened to his son forced him to say, “You can understand their point, though, can’t you? I mean, we’ve all got to be careful these days. ”

  “Yeah, cos if you’re not, some bastard’ll sue you, ” Frank replied, accepting the light Ted offered him and sparking up his cigarette. Then he handed it to Keith, who immediately supported his new friend with a coarse Liverpudlian drawl.

  “Let’s face it, guys, if you do so much as put a burn hole in some Judy’s coat sleeve these days, you’re down the court and coughing up big style. ”

  “You reckon?” Ted asked. He recalled how difficult it had been for him and his wife to seek compensation or even establish culpability, even though this had all happened twenty years ago. Nevertheless, he added, “And do you think that’s a bad thing?”

  “It’s just one symptom of a load of stuff that’s making the world impossible to cope with, ” Frank replied, adjusting his bullish posture to elaborate. Something seemed to shift between his legs, though surely that had just been burgeoning moonlight catching on a shell…

  Ted grew even more attentive as the man continued.

  “Political correctness? Fuck me, when I was a lad what you said was what you meant. Everyone understood it. But oh no, not now. And as for welfare benefits…well, we never had what folk have these days. I’m referring to the ’seventies, when being job-less meant scrounging for ya next meal. But we learned endurance. We survived. You ask any of ’em to lift a finger nowadays and the fuckers’ll stab you in the street. I don’t know what’s happening, guys. I just don’t know what the world’s coming to. ”

  Frank paused, drawing from his failing cigarette; a spark leapt off the end, appearing to grow larger as it descended…but then Ted’s glance was diverted as the Bradford man went no less vociferously on.

  “And as for the fucking Pakis …Now listen, I’m not a violent man, but believe me, I’d happily nuke the fucking lot of ’em. Send ’em home to fucking Asia and press the fucking button. Be delighted to do it. Bomb the bastards back to the Stone Age. ”

  Something about the words the man had used caused Ted to perceive an element of the landscape—something from the rocks maybe, or possibly the beach—burning with vibrant intensity. Then he was thinking back to what he’d recently learned about Andalusia, about its occupation by the Carthaginians, the Romans, the Visigoths, the Vandals…and the Muslims.

  These thoughts emerged from his sensitive mind this evening. He’d been dwelling on the past—always a dangerous act, even in the absence of horrors involved in his own—rather than on this region of Spain. Surely what the man in the bar had been referring to (…tenazas …) was unrelated to this.

  But with so much cigarette smoke (…heat …) performing beguiling movements (…do its thing …) in the air around him, Ted found himself converting his mounting rage into five simple yet inexplicably sinister words.

  “El calor, hacer tu cosa, ” he said in a low whisper, and then added in a louder voice, “Oh, burn so. Sting like butterflies. ”

  “Hey, you pissed, mate?” asked Frank, clearly having shaken off his trivial hatred. He began laughing, and moments later, Keith joined in. Which rendered the shock of what followed all the more powerful. Only a true believer can make the tenazas come, the man in the bar had claimed, and if that was true, Ted must be such a person. But did such belief always presuppose hatred? Or was that quirk exclusive to himself?

  In short, was Ted no better than Frank?

  The things, two of them, rose in the dark. At first Ted thought they were insects—fireflies, maybe—though both were larger than any species he’d ever seen before. With his companions’ cigarette ends glowing in shadow, the entities’ light cast an orange hue over nearby rocks. Then they became more visible, though no less identifiable. Ted saw troubled expressions develop on Frank and Keith’s faces, just as these creatures assaulted them.

  They were now nearly a foot high and wide. Both seemed to be made of fire and
appeared double-breasted, like a butterfly. Wings that were little more than hot yellow flame flapped on either side of their writhing bodies. Then they grew bigger still, primed to attack. Alcohol had rendered the two men sluggish, and before either could evade these ethereal beings, they were viciously set upon. The tenazas—if this was what the things were—flitted rapidly around their backs and proceeded to hug them.

  Looking on with transfixion, Ted saw the creatures pincer each man. He was put in mind of what he’d first witnessed when Frank had introduced himself, the way the sun behind had nipped him thinner, eliminating his sides with its fierce rays. But that had been an illusion. And this was nothing of the sort.

  Flesh had begun to boil, overruling the dense aroma of the barbecue, way beyond range of the men’s sudden shrieks. In all the shadowy darkness, Ted saw the entities pinch harder, their wings or what fiery shapes passed for them squeezing against their prey. Frank’s shoulders were gone. Keith’s ribcage had dissolved. But despite such horrors, all Ted could think was: Who had cursed this area? Who had created the tenazas?

  Moments later, his hunger satiated by these sights, he began hurrying back for the partying crowd. He heard nothing in his wake—no humming, buzzing or any other sound associated with wildlife. Then he yelled out, telling every one of his frightened companions, that there’d been a terrible accident. He brandished his cigarette to show how rigorous a health and safety policy should remain. Indeed, after turning to illustrate the point with evidence, all he saw at a distance were two charred corpses…and nothing at all that could have caused such damage.

  Then, finally understanding the nature of the departed tenazas, Ted thought with beguiling intuition: We’re all damned. Every one of us, including me, is seeking the pincers.

  THE DEMONS OF NEW STREET

  ———

  Barry was returning from his evening walk when he noticed the couple in the house at the top of his street. A youngish pair, maybe mid-thirties, they were standing at the front window of the first floor apartment…which surprised Barry because he’d assumed that, like the two other apartments in this end-terrace property, this one was still on the market.

  The light wasn’t good, only a quarter moon lending life to a moody sky, and the couple’s faces were difficult to see. However, Barry had the impression that, like any newcomers eager to make a positive first impression, they were smiling his way, their expressions revealing toothy mouths.

  The pair certainly had a good reason to be cheerful, Barry reflected as he crossed the road from the swanky, redeveloped half of the street to the rundown, neglected side. Ever since investors had poured money into the row of properties opposite his own, Barry had felt smug because few had sold. The credit crunch had hampered the faceless moneymen from out of town, which privately pleased him. He’d never considered himself a vindictive or even an envious man, but there the feeling had stood.

  Now, however, another of the refurbished residences had been purchased, no doubt by ambitious, career-minded folk who’d want little to do with Barry and his long-term partner Bev. He was glad he hadn’t smiled back at the pair standing at that window; he tried telling himself that this had had nothing to do with their—in hindsight, rather unsettling—fixed grins.

  Once back inside his cramped terrace home, Barry shuffled beyond the usual disorder in the hallway (Bev was an eBay trader and used what little space they had to store her stock) and entered the kitchen to find his lover of three decades sitting at the scuffed kitchen table, pricing up new acquisitions from the town’s charity shops, which she’d remarket online for a modest profit. Hearing him enter, she glanced up, smiled her fifty-five year-old smile—those cute crow’s feet ever-welcoming—and said, “Oh hi. How are you…feeling?”

  “Invigorated, ” he replied, too quickly to sound natural, but didn’t want any fuss about his physical condition. High cholesterol was hardly a rare ailment these days and far from a serious one. He simply wished to establish a regular exercise routine and to be left alone to do so. Heading across to the sink to fill the kettle for a cuppa, he said, “Hey, guess what?”

  “What?” Bev replied, admiring a garish ornament she’d no doubt describe as ‘unique’ in her virtual shop.

  “That place across the road—the swanky joint that’s been empty for two years, ever since investors got their fingers burnt after refurbishing it…”

  Having filled the kettle, he switched it on, and then awaited his lover’s question. And eventually she consented to play his game.

  “Well, ” she asked, genuinely intrigued, “what about it?”

  He tried not taking too much pleasure in hesitating before replying, “Someone’s living there now. ”

  While spooning instant coffee granules into two mugs, he sensed Bev’s gaze burning into his back. He knew that she’d always coveted such a fine home and that his wage from the management post at the local pound-shop hadn’t allowed them to aspire to much more than a functional place to live. At their age, however, they should be grateful for being comfortable. Many of their friends had struggled during the credit crunch—mostly those with family dependents—but even so, a cautious approach to life had left him and Bev in a good position. And not taking such risks as acquiring a hefty mortgage had certainly helped here.

  Barry believed he could talk openly about that property across the road. He and Bev had grown immune to temptation represented by the For Sale board permanently stationed in front of it. They were beyond such weakness. Upwards mobility was a younger person’s game, and they were happy with their comparatively modest yet highly secure lot.

  After making the drinks, he turned to his lover and noticed her staring his way. Accepting one of the cups, she said, “Are you sure, Barry?”

  “Am I…sure about what, love?”

  “Well, about somebody living there. ”

  “I saw them at the front window, plain as day. Youngish couple. Cheerful looking. ”

  Bev adopted her clever-girl voice, the one he’d fallen in love with back at school about a thousand years ago. “Ah, but it’s night-time now, love. Maybe…maybe what you saw was just a trick of the light. ”

  But then he laughed, exhibiting the playful attitude she’d always claimed to admire most about him. “Bev, I’ve got blood pressure issues and high cholesterol—not early onset dementia. ” He stopped laughing, looked at her, and then added more seriously, “I know what I saw, and what I saw was two people looking out at me. ”

  “Well…they might just have been looking round the place. Jackie from the estate agents said those properties get a lot of casual viewers with no intention of buying. ”

  Theirs was a small community, and folk living and working here tended to be familiar with one another. Barry knew Jackie from the estate agents well. Indeed, if rumours were true, a lot of guys from the town were even more familiar with her…but he was supposed to be talking to Bev.

  “It’s hardly likely that the agent would show viewers round at this time of night. ” He checked his wristwatch: it was nine-thirty. “And I don’t believe it’s common practice to lend out keys willy-nilly to potential clients. ”

  Bev appeared to have come round to his way of thinking, but while sipping her coffee her expression remained puzzled. “I’m just surprised Jackie didn’t mention anything the last time she and I spoke. She knows how fond I am of that place, how one day I’d even hoped that you and I might…well, you know. ”

  “Too late now, darling, ” Barry replied, and didn’t feel guilty about putting an end to his partner’s dream. It had never been a realistic one, anyway—certainly not in their tax bracket. Then, before starting on his own drink, he finished, “It seems that a pair of young demons has beaten us to its door. ”

  ——

  The following day Barry got a telephone call at work.

  He’d been on the shop-floor at the time, ensuring that the ragtag staff under his stewardship were suitably occupied. This wasn’t a top-class store—everyt
hing cost a pound and was as common as table salt—but it was popular, and in these hard times, playing life cautiously was a sensible strategy.

  When the tannoy system summoned him to the nearest phone, he went at once, removing his gaze from a gang of youths who looked eager to fill their pockets with goods without paying, even at these foolish prices. He could hardly blame them, but the law was the law and he held little compunction about applying it whenever his job demanded.

  After hitching up the store’s phone near the stockroom, however, he forgot the youths and grew curious about who might be contacting him. He had a few drinking mates from the town, but none had ever bothered him during a working day. Perhaps this was his aged mother, calling from her nearby sheltered housing…but all her needs were provided for by a warden and nurses assigned to the complex. So who else could it be?

  He said, “Hello?”

  And was reassured when Bev started speaking. “Oh hi, Barry. Hey, guess what?”

  He felt as if their roles were reversed from the previous evening, when they’d talked about the couple he’d seen occupying the renovated property across their street. That pair was still on his mind, not least because he’d dreamt about them last night. In the dream he’d been walking home again after light exercise, only this time he’d glanced up at that moonlit window and noticed bright faces staring out at him…faces whose widened mouths had boasted fangs.

  But that was all silly, of course. And he must now respond to Bev.

  “I have no idea, love. Why don’t you tell me?”

  What she said next caused a shiver of unease to ripple along his spine. He began feeling so uncomfortable that he had to turn to the shop floor, with its aisles full of electric light, to remove some of the creeping fear lurking in his mind.